The Internet has become increasingly popular with end users, to the extent that advertisers have become attracted to this new medium. A typical type of Internet ad is known as the banner ad, which is generally displayed on the top of each web page. Operators for popular news and other sites, for example, can increase revenue by selling banner ad space to advertisers.
Frequently, advertisers choose sites to pay for banner ad space based on two criteria. First, advertisers pay to have their ads shown to specific types of people. For example, a golf store might want to have its ads shown on a sports-related page, or to people who are likely to be interested in golf based on their browsing history. Second, advertisers pay to have their ads served in such a way that they are likely to be “clicked on”, so that the user will be transported to the advertiser's web site. The click through rate of an ad is the percentage of times a user clicks on the ad to be transported to the advertiser's web site, against the number of times the ad is shown. Advertisers in need of advertising are thus attracted to sites that generate click through, and are usually willing to pay extra to those sites that can deliver increased click through.
Thus, when a consumer clicks on an advertiser's banner ad, the consumer is transported to the advertiser's web site. Because of the nature of the transport protocol used for nearly all web browsing, a protocol known as HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP), the advertiser knows the identification of the web page from which the user was transported to the advertiser's site. However, the advertiser typically receives little other information. Significantly, for example, the advertiser does not receive information regarding the consumer that has just been transported to the advertiser's site.
This is problematic in the context of web-based advertising, because, unlike other advertising mediums such as television, radio, and print, web-based advertising is supposed to be targeted advertising. For example, a television ad generally cannot be specifically tailored for each individual viewer, because of the constraints of the technology: television is a broadcast medium. However, theoretically, a web ad can be specifically tailored for each individual user, because the Internet is a technology that permits different information to be sent to each individual user.
This theoretical ability of the web for targeted advertising is, unfortunately, muted in the context of banner ad click-through, since the advertiser does not have any specific information regarding the user who has just been transported to its web site. For this and other reasons, therefore, there is a need for the present invention.